Samuel Wilks was born on 2 June 1824 in Camberwell, London, the second son of Joseph Barber Wilks, a cashier at the East India House. After attending Aldenham School and University College School he was apprenticed to Richard Prior, a doctor in Newington.[1]
Career
In 1842 he entered Guy's Hospital to study medicine. After graduating MB in 1848 he was hired as a physician to the Surrey Infirmary (1853). In 1856 he returned to Guy's Hospital, first as assistant physician and curator of its museum (a post he held for nine years), then as physician and lecturer on medicine (1857). From 1866 to 1870 he was examiner in the practice of medicine at the University of London and from 1868 to 1875 examiner in medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons.
Korsakoff's syndrome). Wilks described the first case of myasthenia gravis
, in 1877 (it was named "bulbar paralysis" in Guy's Hospital Reports 22:7).
He was a collaborator and biographer of the "Three Great", contemporary physicians who worked at Guy's Hospital, Dr.
Hodgkin's lymphoma. After the death of Addison in 1860, he carried out the job of examining specimens from all over the country in order to confirm the diagnosis of Addison's disease and thus was able to amass a large case archive. He also rediscovered and confirmed the existence of Hodgkin's lymphoma, at the same time recognizing Hodgkin's priority and proposing the eponym
.
Honours and awards
Samuel Wilks depicted by Spy in Vanity Fair, October 1892
Among his many services and honors, Wilks was elected a
Queen Victoria in 1897. The following year he was created a baronet, of Grosvenor Street in the Parish of Saint George Hanover Square
in the County of London.
Later life
In later life he suffered a stroke and was terminally paraplegic. He died aged 87 at his home in Hampstead on 8 November 1911. After his death the baronetcy became extinct. He had married Mrs. Elizabeth Anne Prior, widow of previous employer Richard Prior; they had no children.
Publications
Lectures on Pathological Anatomy, 1869
Lectures on the Specific Fevers and on Diseases of the Chest, 1874
Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, 1878
Lectures on Pathology Delivered at the London Hospital. J & A Churchill, London, 1891.
A Biographical History of Guy's Hospital, 1892 (with G. T. Bettany)
